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American Heart Association reports more hospitalizations and higher charges for Kids with High Blood Pressure

June 19, 2012 |

Dallas, TX – Hospitalizations for children with high blood pressure and related charges dramatically increased during 10 years ending in 2006, according to a study published in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension.

This nationally-based study is the first in which researchers examined hypertension hospitalizations in children.While researchers expected a rise in hospitalizations due to the increased frequency of high blood pressure in children, “the economic burden created by inpatient childhood high blood pressure was surprising,” said Cheryl Tran, M.D., study lead author and pediatric nephrology fellow in the Department of Pediatric Nephrology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Average length of stay for children with hypertension was double that of children with other illnesses, eight days compared to four days.

Researchers hypothesize that the increasing hospitalizations may in part be due to the rise in childhood obesity.

Children hospitalized with hypertension were more likely to be older than 9 years, male, African-American and treated in a teaching hospital.

Overall, the most common diagnoses for hospitalized children were pneumonia, acute appendicitis and asthma. When hypertension was the primary diagnosis, convulsive disorder, headache, obesity and systemic lupus erythematosus were the most common secondary diagnoses.

[320left]When high blood pressure was in any diagnoses, the most common primary diagnoses were lupus, complications of kidney transplant, pneumonia and acute proliferative glomerulonephritis, a condition in the kidney that causes inflammation that can result in hypertension.